Father and Me
by Untouchable Lullaby
Summary: After a lifetime of pain, secrets, death and lies it has finally come to an end. Mai's father is on his deathbed when she returns to him one last time. As she returns to him she wonders if he is really dying and then she gets her answer. "I yearn to hate you, but I cannot. Too much has passed between us - a lifetime of fear and awe and the love that you took and twisted." - Mai.


_Father and Me._

_Mai's point of view._

* * *

I receive the news in August.

He is dying. I repeat he phrase over and over. _He is dying. _Somehow it doesn't seem possible that he should die. He outlasted them all. Now he will join them, wherever they have gone- if indeed we go anywhere at all.

A wry smile curves my lips; years ago I would have chastised myself for the thought. Now I do not shut out what is real. Reality has pursued me. So I yield to it. In this perhaps Reality and I will make our peace.

I arrive at my childhood house – running to him again – and draw a breath as I enter his bedroom. I imagined this scene before many times; a strange and reluctant morbit fantasy. In a dynamic confrontation, Father lies dying, beseeching me for forgiveness; I grant it with a heart as pure as a prayer, rising about my base instincts so that he may be afforded peace.

It will not play out that way, I am certain.

He is in bed, that much is given – a great mahogany four-poster with a beautiful blue velvet canopy. He looks tiny. It occurs to me for the first time how much this small man has done, how many lives he has raised high, how many lives he has shattered. To think what one small man can achieve. ..

I approach him. He is dying, after all. I must try to be gracious.

He gestures me to sit beside him. I remain standing. Years of experience have taught me not to get too close to my father. I do not know how much strength he has left in him, but I am certain there is enough to strike out like a coiled snake.

He purses his lips and eases himself up into a sitting position. "I think you have been avoiding me," he says in an almost laugh.

I say nothing.

"I'll be leaving you, it seems." He averts his head to look out the window, out at the world. "You will be free."

I close my eyes. Anger hot as wine surges through my veins.

"Free? I breathe, incredulous. This will not do, I tell myself. I am supposed to exemplify grace and composure. But the words come, pulled forth by force greater than I am. "I can never be free. You have taken away everyone and everything that has ever meant a thing to me. Mother, Joey, Tea, Yugi, Serenity, Valon, Vivian, Tristan..." I shake my head. I still can't believe the length of the list, even after all this time. "And my childhood friends, my beloved childhood friends..." My shoulders quake with sobs. "Now you dare say I am free." I offer a bitter smile. "Free to do what? Duel? Marry? Marry whom? I am thirty-five years old and in poor health. I am known forever as the woman who condemned her brother to death and her father to prison. I am regarded as little better than...Hitler!"

He says nothing. His black eyes are alert; indeed, he does not look like he is dying. His expression bears the same calm indifference it always did; his lips twist into a sardonic half smile. The only indication he is unwell lies in the fact that he is abed in his nightclothes. He would never have presented himself before anyone thus when he enjoyed good health.

"So you do hate me, then." he says, his voice soft, almost as though he is hoping to satisfy a point of curiosity.

"I should," I tell him. "But no. Stripping me of everyone deserving of my love ensured that I would always be yours. You were the only man, the only _being_ I was ever permitted to love." I pause, allowing him to appreciate the profundity of the statement. "So I did love you, with all my _soul_ I loved you. So much that I blinded myself to your savagery and indifference. What I allowed myself to see justified or, at the very least, explained. And now, now when I can hate you, when I _yearn_ to hate you, I cannot. Too much has come to pass between us – a lifetime of fear and awe and the love you took and twisted."

He flinches at this. His head lolls to the side, He closes his eyes. For on panicked moment I fear my outburst has been too much for him and this will be my last memory of this man – this man who, despite everything, I still loved.

"Dad?" No response. "Dad!" I cry in fear.

His eyes flutter open. He draws a sigh. "It was not your fault, you know."

"What?" I ask, sitting beside him now. I take his thin hand into mine, how I used to marvel at power in its perfection. Now it is a gnarled patchwork of veins and wrinkles and age spots. An old man's hand.

"Your brother." He regards me. Tears stand in his bright eyes; they are like liquid onyx. "The trial. My imprisonment. It was not your fault."

I am unable to mask my bitterness. "You tell me this now? Is this a recent epiphany or did you enjoy my years of guilt?"

He emits a heavy sigh, ignoring the question, just as I expect. "My drawer...in the desk there. There is something I want you to have."

I rise and make way to the desk, opening the drawer. My manner is angry and distracted. I pull it harder that I should and it slide out so far it get caught. I cannot push it back.

"Never mind that," says Dad, his tone weary. "Look inside."

I look. Tears form a lump in my throat. I reach down to finger the tiara, the little silver tiara with the diamonds he presented to me when I was eleven years old, the tiara I had thrown at him in anger on the day my mother died.

"You kept it." I murmur.

"I carried it to trial with me," He coughs. He taps his side with a slim finger. "I kept it in my pocket."

I sit beside him again, fingering the tiara, so dainty, so perfect for a young girl. Father takes it from me, admiring it for a moment himself. He reaches out, cupping my cheek, wiping away tears with a thumb before slowly taking me hair out from the bun I have it in. When my hair is exposed he runs his fingers through it. "That hair of yours," he says in an absent way, half a smile playing on his lips. I try to laugh but it catches in my throat. Father places the tiara on my head, keeping his warm hands on either side of my face.

"Mai," he says. His voice thick with emotion. "It was always you. Only you,"

It is a love I do not understand. Nor do I understand my reciprocation of it.

So I do not try. I crawl into bed beside him, resting my head on his chest, wrapping my arm around his middle. He draws me close, holding me there for a moment longer. It is our first true embrace. There is nothing expected from it. No more is anyone being manipulated; no more is being sought; no more is ambition fuelling Father's every breath. There is no more dreams or hopes. All these years of pain and struggling and fighting have brought us to this; a list of no mores.

We hold each other a long while. I find myself enveloped in death's mantle; I cannot shrug it off.

When I leave him, my anger faded to a numbness some may call peace. I know I will never see my father again. It does not matter so much. Wherever he goes I will soon follow.

So it has always been with Father and me.

* * *

_Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, pain of love lasts a lifetime. - Unknown_


End file.
